of speech, sense, desire. You should
just start printing money, you once

said to me, because I was on fire.
I was on fire because you lit me,

like an ecstatic youth might do.
Yes, now it is a controlled burn.

Yes, I love what will eventually
destroy me. Yes, I pledge allegiance

to the environmental sculpture,
soon to degrade, that is you.

Virginia Konchan is the author of a poetry collection, The End of Spectacle (Carnegie Mellon, 2018), a collection of short stories, Anatomical Gift (Noctuary Press, 2017), and two chapbooks, including That Tree is Mine (dancing girl press, 2018). Her poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, The New Republic, The Believer, Boston Review, and elsewhere.